Rumcherod

abbreviated name of the Central Executive Committee of Soviets of the Rumanian Front, the Black Sea Fleet, and the Odessa Military District, which included Kherson, Bessarabia, and Tavrida provinces and parts of Podol’sk and Volyn’ provinces.

The first Rumcherod was elected at the first frontline and regional congress of soviets, which met from May 10 to May 27 (May 23-June 9), 1917, in Odessa. The majority in the first Rumcherod was held by the Socialist Revolutionaries (SR’s) and Mensheviks, who supported the bourgeois Provisional Government and adopted a hostile attitude toward the October Revolution of 1917. On Dec. 3 (16), 1917, the supreme commander in chief, N. V. Krylenko, and the Military Revolutionary Committee at Headquarters, by order of the Council of People’s Commissars, declared the SR-Menshevik Rumcherod dissolved, since it did not reflect the will and sentiments of the Bolshevized masses. Local revolutionary forces were urged to form a new Rumcherod, which would adhere to a Soviet program.

The second frontline and regional congress of soviets, which met in Odessa from Dec. 10 to Dec. 23, 1917 (Dec. 23, 1917, to Jan. 5, 1918), recognized the Soviet government and approved its policies and elected a new Rumcherod with 180 members (70 Bolsheviks, 55 Left SR’s, 23 representatives of peasant organizations, and 32 from other fractions). V. Volodarskii represented the Central Committee of the RSDLP(B) and the Council of People’s Commissars at the second congress. The Bolshevik V. G. Iudovskii was elected chairman of the Rumcherod. The press organ of the Rumcherod was the newspaper Golos revoliutsii (Voice of the Revolution), which was published from July 1917 to March 1918, when the Austro-German occupation authorities suppressed it.

In late December 1917 and in January 1918, the Rumcherod played a major role in the establishment of Soviet power in southwestern Ukraine and in Moldavia, where it was the highest agency of Soviet power. From January to March 1918, it led the struggle against the Rumanian and the Austro-German interventionists. Together with the Supreme Autonomous Collegium for Russo-Rumanian Affairs of the Council of People’s Commissars, it conducted diplomatic negotiations with the Rumanian government, resulting in an agreement of March 5–9, 1918, on the withdrawal of Rumanian troops from Bessarabia for a two-month period (the agreement was later violated by boyar-controlled Rumania). In March 1918, because of the Austro-German intervention, the Rumcherod was evacuated to Nikolaev, then to Rostov-on-Don, and finally, in April, to Eisk. In May 1918 it ceased its activities.